NEWS OF THE WEEK A IR Transport : Need for speeding up aircraft, 355 ; leeway in pro- duction, 471 ; independent air transport, 691 ; debate on free enterprise .. 799 Army .....

General Robertson has declared that the British garrison in the Canal Zone will meet force with force; to which Nahas Pasha has produced the pithy rejoinder - that Egypt will...

A F TER what the superstitious,would regard as ill-omened delays Mr. Churchill and his colleagues are on the point of landing in New York. In certain American quarters their...

The offer by the United Nations' negotiators to modify their claims for supervision and inspection throughout Korea during the truce, in' return for the abandonment of the...

The situation which led M. Pleven to put the question of confidence in the attempt to get the Budget through the National Assembly was typical enough of French politics. The...

The Exchequer returns on December 31st, at the end of the first nine months of the financial• year, showed that Government ordinary expenditure exceeded revenue by £209m. Since...

There is a laudable air of restraint about the announcement put out by the Monsanto Chemical Company of the United States about a substance called Krilium, which, by improving...

The rise in costs and prices is due to be halted, if Government action can halt it, in 1952. Several Ministers, during the tenure of the Labour Government, forecast that the...

T HE Six-Power talks at Paris last week brought the idea of a European Army nearer realisation, but it would be difficult to say precisely how much nearer. Informa- tion about...

T HE New Year's Honours, thanks largely to the inclusion of a number of persons who helped to make the Festival of Britain what it was, are rather more interesting than usual....

Maxim Litvinov since his family and mine shared a charwoman when he was living in the Hampstead Garden Suburb during the First War, and I used sometimes to walk down to the Tube...

Chartered Seminary of the International Free Protes- tant Episcopal University. A new university, if I mistake not, swims into our ken—fully chartered, though chartered by whom...

replace the Globe of Death performance in its programme after last week's deplorable fatality. But why was the performance ever there at all ? Of course those turns which cause...

his selection as Conservative candidate for Bournemouth East (out of, I believe, about 800 would-be candidates), for it means that, failing - a political revolution, he will in...

of pother about the failure of the Royal Society of Literature to elect his friend Mr. Dennis Wheatley to a Fellowship of that body. What seems to have happened is that...

Spartan custom of exposing children I can offer it—on the authority of a fifteen-year-old examinee in a certain public school : ... The children were brought up very ahead of...

I 64 S Churchill a Bevanite?" an American columnist enquired the other day. The answer turned out to be well no, not really; it was just that both Mr. Churchill and Mr. Bevan...

ByIAIN COLQUHOUN I N France, since the war, one sometimes feels that such national life as exists flourishes only in the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe. So many of the French...

has pointed out in this journal and as other organs of news and opinion have reported, there is serious news out of America. "Hopalong " Cassidy is retiring—that is, Mr. William...

By CECIL NOWITICOTT T RAVELLING in the Gold Coast nowadays is rather like taking part in a perpetual political night at a university debating society; the arguments come swift...

By J. P. W. MALLALIEU, M.P. S ATURDAY, November 9th, was a wonderful day. Neither my wife nor I had anything to do, except, of course, to clean the grates and make the beds and...

By ANGELA THIRKELL L ET'S talk of zebras, said Mr. (or should it be Messrs.) Janus on December 28th. We will. Operation Zebra. Not that we call it that. Rather do we in the...

CHRISTMAS SIGHTS THE Christmas season of 1851 has not been very fruitful in novelties in that department of supply which is the more special demand of the time. The Panoramas,...

By HAROLD NICOLSON I FIND that some of my contemporaries, when I congratu- late them on the opening of a fresh delightful year, express apprehension and displeasure. They...

u Lone Star." (Empire.)----" Ore 9 : Lezione di Chimica." (Studio One.)—" Two Tickets to Broadway." (Odeon, Marble Arch.) Tim Empire is beginning its New Year, if not with . a...

Comedy' is the play by Bruce Walker which, as Cosh Boy, made a stir at the Embassy. rt is hardly a Christmassy sort of thing, but after a deal of sugar and spice and all things...

To keep under control any critical sourness, one had better begin by praising something. In a broadcast talk Mr. Macqueen-Pope made an eager plea for the restoration of...

THEATRE “ A Midsummer Nights Dream." by William Shakespeare a ,(Old Vic.) Tim Old Vic Company is not a strong one, and it is to Mr. Guiluie's credit that he has imposed on this...

give some forty broadcasts in the Third Programme under the general heading " Schoenberg and his Time." The series is under the general editorship of Michael Tippett, who...

Sixteen centuries have gone Since warm from a man's hand it fell, And the soil's dark haulm closed over it. Now on an outstretched palm again It lies ; the laurel wreath, the...

OUT of the pool of glass that is its foot and head, This fragile fountain in its crystal groves Upon a stem of light is breathed into the air, Describing heaven in a brimming...

THE Original Ballet Russe is dancing a short season at the Royal Festival Hall. It is only three months since this newly formed company—the inheritors of the de Basil...

Set by N. K. Boot A prize of £5, which may be divided, is offered for not more than twelve lines from an Ode to an Inflationary Spiral. Entries must be addressed to the...

A prize of £5 was offered for a notice, suitable for insertion in the Classified Advertisement columns of the Spectator offering for sale one of the following : A vest-pocket...

Sta,—In your review of the book by Mr. Hermann Levy on drink it is stated that in 1935 advertising expenditure was 7 per cent, of the sales of drink as compared with 42.6 per...

Open Covenants Sta,—Mr. Noel-Baker protests a little too much. His assertion that the Security Council " settled the question of the Berlin blockade after the old diplomacy had...

SIR,—The Spectator has justly castigated those of us who cannot spell and those to whom punctuation is a mystery. But what about pro- nunciation ? Perhaps some of your learned...

might pay attention to the punctuation of Luke II. 16. Congregations are always being told that the shepherds found " Mary and Joseph and the babe, lying in a manger." The comma...

Sm.—When Mr. Churchill appealed early in the war to all who could to leave the areas subjected to the Blitz, thousands of elderly occupier- owners went to remote areas, having...

SIR, —Mr. Mitchell's article, admirably written as it is, does nothing to lessen the anxiety and impatience which grows - amongst millions of Britons regarding the coal...

SIR, --It is a pity that the author and the reviewer of The Single Woman of Today—and indeed many more who write on the same subject—do not trouble to consult the...

SIR,—" Let's talk of zebras." Surely, the point is we've talked too much about zebras and too little about the rest of the road; for the trouble is not what occurs on a crossing...

Sta,—I have no wish to detract from Mr. Wilson Harris's sentimental perambulations in Gower Street. , Surely, however, since it was inhabited by the famous men whom he mentions,...

SIR,—State management was introduced into Carlisle in 1917 because of the d:sorderly conduct of imported munition workers. It has yet to be shown that Carlisle people are happy...

SIR, —In your article The Omens for 1952 appears the sentence: " But in this country courage never .fails of its reward." Although we should all like to believe that this is...

for British books in Canada, which are often excessive. But the basis is almost invariably decided in Toronto, and in most cases, even though he supplies the books on...

Sut,—With reference to Professor Satterly's• letter in your issue of December 28th I would like to point out that my firm does not sell Smart's The Origin of the Earth in...

SIR,—Presumably the man who sets the Christmas Question§ also supplies the answers, and he should be right. But, I protest, the missing partner to Gunn is not Shrewsbury, but...

Sta,—Professor Brogan says he has seen the statistics which prove that air travel is safer than road or rail, and doesn't believe them. I think I know why. The airlines say that...

Sut,—Recent careful observation convinces me that Janus gives bad advice to motorists when he bids them, during daylight fog, switch on their side-lights only. Sometimes the...

SIR,—Janus writes that the true metier of the late Hilary St. George Saunders was writing popular histories of the war. If this means that the co-author of The Seven Sleepers...

SIR, —If your correspondent, " Father of Four," cares to let me know the name of the school in question, I will gladly make enquiries, and, if the facts are substantiated...

Anemones, St. Brigid variety, blooin on the lower rockery. Since I put in these corms some years ago, they have changed their time for blooming. Now they have flowers at...

OYSTER-CATCHERS are birds of the tide-line. Their " deep, deep " cry is familiar there. When I heard the cry while walking along the lane I was puzzled. It came from a garden,...

runs through the gully in the glen. Now the place is quiet once more. The hard, unmuffled noise of the flood has died. The water was brown and now it is clear, and it is hard to...

A sort of liMber, drawn by a powerful engine, came cautiously down the hill. It was loaded with several whole trees from which the branches had been trimmed. Back there, beyond...

Three perch I brought from a mountain lake and put in a glass tank have thriven and become quite tame. They are fed on worms every few days, and if they show no signs of growing...

Lawrence remained in character an Englishman. Despite the whole series of novels and sketches through which in the end he seemed to get the influence of his home at Eastwood in...

IN the course of its judgement the International Military Tribunal of Nuremberg claimed that it was applying known and existing rules of international law. In December, 1946,...

MOST of us on this side of the Atlantic regard Mr. Wilson as the distinguished writer of large books, who first broke upon us with Axel's Castle, and stimulated us mightily, and...

Dostoievsky. By C. M. Woodhouse. (Arthur Barker. 8s. 6d.) MR. WOODHOUSE'S little book is intended as a preliminary guide for those who have not yet ventured into the vast and...

Lely. By R. B. Beckett. (Routkedge. sos.) Regency Portrait Painter: The Life of Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A. By Douglas Goldring. (Macdonald. 2 s.) WHEN I was asked to review...

The Prose of John Clare. Edited by J. W. and Anne Tibble. (Routledge and Kegan Paul. 3os.) THE poet is sometimes seen more clearly in informal prose than in his poetry. His...

Shakespeare and Elizabethan Poetry. By M. C. Bradbrook. (Chatto & Windus. 16s.) MISS BR ADBROOK describes this most engaging work as an " old- fashioned Victorian attempt to...

Hugo Wolf. By Frank Walker. (Dent. 36s.) 1951 will count as a memorable year for musicology. It has produced, amid the customary spate of ephemera, two books which are a con-...

Family Reunion. By Ogden Nash. (Dent. 8s. 6d.) Back to the Slaughterhouse. By Ronald Searle. (Macdonald. 6s.) THAT Mr. Wodehouse is—or do we say " was " ?—a master of his craft...

The Greenshank. By Desmond Nethersole-Thompson. (Collins. New Naturalist Series. i Ss.) IT is a brutal shame on the author (and on a greenshank) to have clothed this book in a...

The Devil in Velvet. By John Dickson Carr. (Hamish Hamilton. 2g. 6d.) - What Dreams May Come. By Cynthia Asquith. (James Barrie. tea. 6d.) I TAKE off my hat to Mr. John...

winner of Crossword No. 657 is: Mrs. GREENE, Incents, Crow- borough, Sussex.

LA Book Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution opened after noon on Tuesday week, January 12th, addressed Crossword, t9 Cower Street,...

By CUSTOS AT the opening of a new year the pattern of markets is much as has been widely ex- pected. Gilt-edged stocks are finding it hard to stand up to desultory selling,...